Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

Tiago Saraiva

Abstract

“Fascist Pigs” investigates the breeding of new animals and plants embodying fascism. It details the role of technoscientific organisms in the national battles for food independence launched by Mussolini, Salazar, and Hitler, the first large scale mobilizations of the three fascist regimes. The narrative transforms the fascist “back to the land” into a modernist experiment involving geneticists and their organisms (wheat, potatoes, pigs), mass propaganda for peasants and urban consumers, and overgrown bureaucratic structures. In contrast to the generalized emphasis on race, it brings food to t ... More

“Fascist Pigs” investigates the breeding of new animals and plants embodying fascism. It details the role of technoscientific organisms in the national battles for food independence launched by Mussolini, Salazar, and Hitler, the first large scale mobilizations of the three fascist regimes. The narrative transforms the fascist “back to the land” into a modernist experiment involving geneticists and their organisms (wheat, potatoes, pigs), mass propaganda for peasants and urban consumers, and overgrown bureaucratic structures. In contrast to the generalized emphasis on race, it brings food to the forefront of a renewed understanding of fascism.The fascist obsession with land translated also into violent imperial quests for Lebensraum in Europe and Africa. The book unveils how agricultural experiment stations in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Auschwitz were central for putting in place colonial forced labor schemes for the production of coffee, cotton, and rubber. The story of karakul sheep standardized by scientists at the University of Halle goes a step further. It follows sheep around into Germany, Ukraine, South West Africa, Libya, and Angola, connecting through the travels of a single organism the white settler stories and frontier genocide of the three fascist regimes.This is not a study about what happened to scientists under fascism, but one that by following the historical trajectories of technoscientific organisms reveals how new forms of life intervened in the formation and expansion of fascism.

End Matter

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